Carpetbagger left me with a suggested topic to post: Best Political Movie. I’m not sure how tightly to define that. The classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, was certainly political. So was The Last Hurrah. Sunrise at Campobello, too, though it had touches of biography. Citizen Kane was mostly biographical, but it did include his […]
Guest Post by Morbo Recently I read a review of Our Oldest Enemies: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France, a new book that claims the French have worked for centuries to undermine America’s interests. Browsing at my local book store last week, I saw a different book making a similar argument. Although I […]
Guest Post by Morbo Of all the dumb things Christian fundamentalists say about evolution — and they say many dumb things about it — perhaps the dumbest is a line like this: “We didn’t come from monkeys!” When anti-evolutionists say this, it proves they have no understanding of what the theory of evolution teaches. It […]
Guest Post by Morbo I wish Amnesty International had not called the Guantanamo Bay detention center a “gulag.” It’s not because I think conditions there are cushy. The existence of this camp, where detainees are housed without access to attorneys and with no charges being filed against them, is a stain on our Constitution. It’s […]
Guest Post by Morbo A poll released last week revealed, once again, that Americans like religion. In results that surprised absolutely no one, a solid majority of Americans told pollsters they consider faith important. Another key finding, that people in Western Europe are less religious than Americans, also restated the obvious. The poll, conducted by […]
Thank God Friday’s Over! My respect for bloggers has gone up greatly after trying to get today’s items written, proofed, graphs made, operating unfamiliar software from afar, unable to scream “Help” to the real Carpetbagger. Just after 6am PST (my zone) I was all set to click “publish” on the first item. It seems to […]
Guest Post by Ed Stephan. Carpetbagger asked me to expand on my post about the Italian economist/sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). There I talked about the cycle Pareto said most governments went through: obtaining power through actual or promised problem-solving, followed by increasing concern about merely staying in power. Since problems aren’t getting solved, governments turn […]
Guest Post by Ed Stephan. Hillary Clinton recently stuck her neck out to propose looking for some “common ground” on the issue of abortion, actually going a step beyond her husband’s stated goal of making abortion “safe, legal and rare”. The GOP, which these days could serve as a prime example for Eric Hoffer’s brilliant […]
Guest post by Ed Stephan. Nearly all news media now tend to “tabloidize” events — not just pointing with alarm to unusual events, but also seeing everything only from the point of view of how events affect an individual. A story about unemployment may begin with “Mary looks fretfully at what may be her last […]
Guest Post by Ed Stephan. File this under both “analysis” and “tirade”, mostly the latter. Shortly after President Clinton reneged on his campaign pledge to admit gays to military service, I wrote this letter-to-the-editor for our local paper, the Bellingham [WA] Herald (Gannett): 30 May 1993 To the Editor: Fundamentalists who favor banning gays from […]